For some reason, certain plants get a bad reputation, usually if they spring up in places humans would prefer them not to. In some cases, those plants are popping up because they were introduced by humans in the first place — rhododendron; bamboo; Himalayan balsam; Japanese knotweed; Western skunk cabbage… (I haven’t made that last one up) — so it’s a bit rich of us to complain when the plants do what it’s in their natures to do — grow and spread and survive. In other cases, those plants have been here for a lot longer than we have — since they were here first, we ought to show them a bit more respect.
I’m helping some friends out on their allotments from time to time this year, and both plots are home to a plant which keeps popping up no matter what you do to it — horsetail (pictured), sometimes known as mare’s tail, known to science as Equisetum arvense. It’s tough as old boots in every sense. It dates back to the Carboniferous period, at least 325 million years. It’s one of those plants that dinosaurs are said to have eaten, but you’d need formidable dentition to manage it: its stems are heavy with silica, and it was once known as “scouring rush” because you could use it to scrub wood and polish metal.
It does no real harm and does wonders for improving biodiversity, and yet it is loathed by many gardeners, who do all they can to eradicate it. The allotmenteers I’m working with aren’t in that camp; both quite content to leave it be, until such time as a patch of ground it’s occupying is needed for something else, and we do our best to remove it. But horsetail has survived asteroid impacts and waves of mass extinction. It’s not going to surrender lightly.
Its rhizomes spread slowly but can be more than two metres below the ground. It is good at intertwining itself with the roots of other plants, making it harder to remove without taking other plants with it. It is no respecter of fences or boundaries and will spread wherever it can. And if you leave even a little bit of it in the ground, it can do a very good job at regenerating itself. Not something to shove onto the compost bed, either, as it can resist even those high temperatures and start to regrow as soon as it’s dug back into the soil.
Horsetail keeps recurring in my mind as a metaphor for narrative, or more specifically, the deepest layers of narrative which are hard to uproot — hard to completely uproot — which find ways to infiltrate into everything, however much you might wish to weed them out or suppress them. I have fortnightly sessions with a therapist, so I’m attuned to looking for connections and threads, I suppose. Identifying those hidden sources of energy that lurk waaaaaaaay below the surface like sweet potato tubers or horsetail rhizomes can, in fact, help us to discover the real story, the ground zero, the source, the starting point of whatever we’re making.
Like my kindly allotment friends with the horsetail, my therapist isn’t trying to get me to unearth and destroy every scrap of what’s lurking in the recesses of my brain/psyche/past. He’s supporting me to accept the presence of these things, to reckon with them and reconcile myself to them, and to be more comfortable with the ways they feed into or entwine with all the other parts of me. Trying to deny them would be like trying to command horsetail to stop growing: defiance just won’t work. Far better to adapt, to learn to co-exist, rather than to set out on a mission of eradication.
Whether you’re in therapy or not (and show me someone who COULDN’T benefit from work with a therapist!), I imagine we’ve all got our own equivalent of The Things Deep Down which inform us, motivate us, even in some way help to explain us. If narrative feels too remote or inapplicable a term for your practice, though, let’s widen things out a bit.
I’m certain that anyone who’s creative in any kind of discipline will be tapping into this rich hidden vein within themselves in some way or other and that it will find expression in some aspect of the work they dedicate themselves to. Perhaps it’s a recurring theme, subject or style; a favoured instrument, structure or technique; a frequent returning to the same landscape; an urge to keep using yellow paint, or sonnet form, or problematic parental figures. It’ll be as unique as you are, but, I’m sure, it’ll show up above ground, all over your plot, every chance it gets.
So, interesting question to leave you on: what is it that Your Things Deep Down keep compelling you towards in your practice? Are you co-existing with it peaceably, or you trying your best to purge it from your soil?
As a little sidenote — the Birmingham-based artist Carolyn Morton is experimenting with horsetail as part of her wider creative practice, so far having used it to produce a range of inks and as a biomaterial for 3D printing. From dinosaur diet to design substance — there’s something rather exquisite about that.
